The will is the spiritual appetitive faculty of the person. It is that faculty by which the human being moves toward goods that have been cognized, decides for or against something, and determines his action. In the Thomistic tradition the will (voluntas) is the appetitive faculty of the rational soul ordered toward the good — it follows cognition but is not determined by it (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 202 ff.).
Will and Freedom
The human will is essentially free. The ontology captures this as free will (Free Will), which belongs to the necessary essential characteristics of the person and counts as a archphenomenon. Freedom of the will means: the person is not fixed by external causes or inner drives but is able to determine itself. It is master of itself — the will makes the person the first cause of its person-behavior (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 210–220).
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes the actus elicitus voluntatis (the inner act of will) from the actus imperatus (the external action commanded by the will). Together they constitute the actus humanus — the fully human, imputable deed.
Will and Cognition
The will presupposes reason: Nihil volitum nisi praecognitum — nothing is willed that has not first been cognized. The decision as an act of will presupposes a judgment about the good. At the same time the will remains free with respect to the judgment — it can also decide against what it has recognized to be right. Herein lies the possibility of moral evil and the drama of human existence.
Will and Person-Behavior
Person-behavior comprises thinking, willing, feeling, and acting. The will is here the agency that initiates action out of the interiority of the person. Karol Wojtyła emphasizes: in the act of will the person experiences itself as causa sui — as someone who acts, not merely as someone to whom something happens. The intellectual experience of willing is irreducible to neuronal processes or behaviorist descriptions.
The heart of the person — in Hildebrand’s sense the center of the deep affective value-responses — stands alongside intellect and will as an independent dimension of personal life. The will alone does not suffice: the deepest personal acts such as love, repentance, and reverence have their seat in the heart.
Will and the Dimensions of Personhood
The will belongs to the Second Dimension of personhood, the dimension of the conscious actualization of personal faculties. Decisive is this: even where the will is not actually exercised (in sleep, in coma, in prenatal life), it remains grounded as a faculty in the First Dimension.
The volitionally actualizable person-behavior designates that person-behavior which can be actualized by the will but is not currently being exercised. Personhood does not depend on the actual exercise of the will. Whoever sleeps does not lose his free will.
Ontological classification:
- Free Will is a subclass of: Archphenomenon, Essential Characteristic
- is presupposed by: Personal Love, Self-Gift, Self-Mastery
- is the ground for: Right to Freedom
Chapter reference: Chapter 4: What is human personhood?
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 8–17 (acts of will: actus elicitus and actus imperatus)
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Osoba i czyn. Kraków (English: The Acting Person, transl. Andrzej Potocki, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979). (the person as causa sui in the act of will)
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von (1973): Ethik. In: Gesammelte Werke, vol. II. Regensburg: Habbel (German). (the heart as center of the affective value-responses alongside intellect and will)